


Bells and Bombs

by idyll



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-14
Updated: 2007-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Some day in some other time/We'll be the ones who are left alive</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Bells and Bombs

They'll meet at a taco stand.

The first time they see each other will go like this:

He'll be brash, defensive, and drunk from exhaustion. She'll be dazed, giddy, and still sort of high from the last bowl she smoked at dawn.

There will be a patch of loose gravel on the way to the outdoor benches and he'll step on it at just the wrong angle. He'll slipslide, windmill his arms for balance, and fall anyway. His food will land in her lap.

People around them will point and laugh at him, but she'll just say: _It's okay. I kind of wanted the supreme, anyway._

Then she'll pick the mess of dropped taco from her lap and offer him her own stack of plain tacos.

They'll bump into each other three more times before they introduce themselves.

*

He'll be an only child who was taken in by his father and grandmother after his mother died of an aneurysm.

She'll come from a broken home in Texas and be the middle of five siblings.

He'll work at a comic book store that also sells music, movies and falafel.

She'll be a top student at the Art Institute even though she only goes to class when she runs out of weed.

*

Despite all that she'll still be Fred, and he'll still be Gunn.

*

She'll ask him out the first time and take him to an obscure art exhibit in a converted warehouse that smells like butchered meat.

He'll point at a bucket of piss that's been dyed purple and ask: _Why is this art?_

Four people will rush over to answer him and when they leave--half an hour and three conflicting explanations later--she'll whisper to him: _Because people can be convinced it is._

On their second date, he'll take her to a dive club in a converted warehouse that still smells like fish. Five indie bands will come and go from the stage and when she looks at him askance, he'll say: _I got hidden depths._

Later, she'll buy their way back stage with a portion of her good stash, which she'll then share with the bands. They'll stay there until after dawn and start friendships with a handful of the musicians.

He'll drop her off at her off-campus apartment and they'll have their first kiss on her doorstep.

*

They'll date for four years, through her graduation from art school and his promotion to store manager. Along the way she'll cut down her weed use and really dedicate herself to producing art; he'll learn how to play the guitar and start a band with some friends from the indie scene. They'll decide to move in with each other and they'll rent a small loft in a converted warehouse that still occasionally smells like yeast.

Then, five years down the line, these things will happen in the course of the same week:

She'll get a call from a friend of one of her former instructors and be offered her own showing.

His band will suddenly start getting non-local airplay.

*

They'll celebrate by going out to their favorite taco stand. For dessert they'll go for pancakes. They'll decide to walk home from the diner. It will be dark.

Halfway home a classic convertible will screech around the corner and come up on the street in front of them during a sloppy park job. A tall pale guy will stumble out of an alley nearby. A pretty woman with dark hair and an uptight looking man with glasses will exit the convertible and run to him.

They will exchange a subtle look and, in an unspoken accord, will cross the street.

But she'll be good at remembering faces, and he'll be good at remembering voices, and neither one of them could forget the imposing man in the flaring black coat.

*

They'll see the pretty girl in the obituaries almost three years later and they'll stare at her wide smile in the accompanying picture.

Not long after that they'll see a picture in the paper of the man with the distinguished voice. He'll be a John Doe, found in the aftermath of a sudden and inexplicable riot that took place not far from the historical Hyperion Hotel. They'll touch their fingers to his bespectacled face and wonder about the man in the long black coat.

*

Her artwork will be filled with the things out of dreams and nightmares. His songs will be reminiscent of dark gray skies that offer only bare glimpses of the sun. Both of them will admit that all of their works speak to a sense of loss that they can't define.

They'll be King and Queen of the underground scene in Los Angeles, and eventually they'll both obtain cult status in places other than their hometown, but they'll always shy away from mainstream success.

*

They'll never marry but they'll have a passel of kids and even adopt another two along the way. They'll winter in Texas on a ranch she'll inherit from her bachelor uncle. He'll bring his father and grandmother out there because the air is cleaner and the living is easier.

His father will remarry when he's in his thirties; her parents will get back together again when she's in her forties.

They'll lose one son too soon and live to see a dozen grandkids.

They'll die within days of each other in their eighties, in a large, multi-level converted loft in downtown Los Angeles that sometimes still smells faintly of soup.

*

Everything will be different, but she'll still be Fred and he'll still be Gunn.

 

.End


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